


To Poison a Queen

by rosncrntz



Category: Richard III - Shakespeare, SHAKESPEARE William - Works
Genre: Abortion, F/M, Love/Hate, Missing Scene, Murder, Not too gory I promise, Poisoning, Toxic Relationship, Violence, kinda modern au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-20
Updated: 2019-04-20
Packaged: 2020-01-22 23:52:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18538024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosncrntz/pseuds/rosncrntz
Summary: Queen Anne must die. Richard knows that. He cannot bear to see her brutalised. Poisoning is just the way to do it. He, at least, owes her a beautiful death.





	To Poison a Queen

**Author's Note:**

> Be warned, this fic does have references to abortion (and some period-typical attitudes to abortion) and does have some gruesome murder-y details. But it's not too bad, I promise.

He had ordered the murders of men; that task was easy for him. He had seen that men were bound by their hands and severed at the neck with a quick stroke of a sharp axe. He had paid for the casual slaughter of men who met their end at the silvery side of a dagger thrust between two ribs. He had overseen the brutal killing of his own blood, his brother drowned in a drowsy liquid, gulping it down in pursuit of his own screams. He had lied men into their graves with a slippery and sharp viper’s tongue. His hands were twice thickened with blood; his guilt was heavy enough to drag him to hell where he stood. Perhaps it should. Murder was a commonplace for King Richard, much like eating one’s evening meal, or falling asleep, or fucking: reasonably pleasurable and a part of his nature. Inevitable.

However, once it became clear to him that his next victim must be his own wife, he did not falter, per se, but he paused. A pause which disturbed him greatly for he could not bear to contemplate the cause of such a pause.

Queen Anne had served her purpose most excellently; Richard commended himself on his good choice of woman. He had not, he assured himself, made a mistake at any point. Handsome, exactly what he needed at the time, nothing like a wife to give one legitimacy, and nothing like a wife to give one heirs. It was in this capacity that Lady Anne grew useless to him, for her womb was barren as ice. A fruitless lady; he had waited - oh, how he had waited, and all for nothing. Another month, another bleed, and with each red smear he saw the ebb of his grip on the throne, his kingdom. He would not - could not bear it, to see his crown drop on the head of some undeserving other, some bastard son of an unmurdered Earl or Baron. He would rather slaughter every man in the land to ensure no such succession that see his sons droop and wilt under a cruel sun. If there were sons at all. Anne gave him none. Already, in his mind’s eye, he saw himself dying childless and heirless and having his hard-won gold ripped from his fingers, stiff and clawed with rigor mortis.

He must have a son. He must see himself ascend in the form of another, young, bearing his name. Straight-spined, even, and strong-armed, too. If almighty God could not bestow upon him eternal life, then at least he must have issue. Anne was stale. But, ah! Elizabeth: young and sweet Elizabeth, with skin as downy and pale as the white rose of her house, but those vixen’s red lips, tempting him, teasing him! Elizabeth drew him to distraction. Anne was growing old and angry, but she! Elizabeth was an uncropped flower. He would cut her down, have her, bear sons on her and see them become kings! It could not be that a form as supple and comely as dear Elizabeth’s, walking quietly through the prickled rose gardens on June mornings in her cream-coloured satins, would be unable to rear young. No! He was confident that Elizabeth of York was just the choice to serve the current purpose. And, regardless, Anne no longer excited him, whilst Elizabeth made him shiver.

This was all that Richard schooled himself in: these, quite simply, were good and honest facts and reasons. And, yet, the thought of disposing of his Queen made him cringe.

Of course, dispose he must. He had assessed his other options. To send Anne to the Tower would raise suspicion, turn the common rabble against him, and he could think of no satisfactory way of explaining away such behaviour. Divorcing her would be out of the question, for his reasons would become obvious and she would only live to terrorise him. To ship her to France would only serve to terrorise him more - it would surely not be long before an army was raised for England’s shores (for Anne had a clever tongue and a well-connected family). Murder became apparent very quickly.

So murder it would be. And this was when Richard became sickened. Not cowardly, no, not at all. Nor was he overcome with anything like guilt or remorse - don’t be ridiculous. It was simply that the method of such a murder left him uneasy. Anne was his wife, his Queen, despite it all. To mangle her body with spears and knifes: it oddly unnerved him. He could hardly bear to think of Anne bloodied, pierced, cut up like a piece of meat. He cursed his own weakness, that he could not simply order her murder as he would any other. But he could not. It felt like a betrayal to do away with her with such a lack of intimacy.

He did not feel affection for Anne. He did not like to think he loved her. But he wanted her to go beautifully. It was how he liked to think of her. Beautiful.

A beautiful death for a beautiful life; that felt only fair.

It was dark, the faint smell of smoke from puffed-out candles thickening the air, when Richard decided upon the method. The method that would dispatch his Queen from him.

Anne Neville was sat before the fireplace, some idle toy of embroidery being undone in her lap by her fidgeting fingers as her eyes studied the spit and curl of flames. The redness moved disjointedly, twisting and mangled, bending whiteness, like the body of her own husband. It was late and Anne believed that her husband was in his bed; his bed, for they slept separately now, save one night a month when he would slip into her chamber to thrash noisily atop her in some vain attempt at impregnation. Her eyelids were heavy by now, but she did not move. There was a pleasant drowsiness in the room, like dreaming, like dreaming. She was so deep in her waking dream that Richard’s uneven step dragging into the room fell on deaf ears, and it was only when his hand landed on her exposed shoulder that she leapt into herself.

“Richard,” Anne muttered. Her voice was strained with sleep. Richard leaned down, though ‘lean’ gives it an elegance which his ‘lean’ did not have, for he descended on her in a motion more like a stumble. This stumble resulted in a kiss on the back of her neck: cold, as always, but needy. “Richard, what is this?” He did not reply but took her hand, almost tenderly, and stood her up. It had scarce been two weeks since they had last tried for child, this was unlike him. Even then, it was never a romantic affair. But, now, he seemed almost amorous.

She cursed her weakness. This man was a spider. But she had always found something about him attractive. He had lured her as a widow from her dead husband’s side with that wickedly handsome smirk and broken body. She desired him and she knew there was a time when he desired her. She had felt his desire. She yearned for such a time. He caught her when she was at her weakest; who would blame her for what her heart and body called for?

So, she followed him. Up to his chamber, in and out of shadows and through the waxy smell of old candles and the musk of tapestries and the mould creeping through them, up, up to his chamber where that unfamiliar bed stood in that shaft of silvery moonlight. He did not speak to her. She did not speak to him neither. And as he let her in and pushed the door closed with a click, he asked Anne to let her hair down. She obeyed and stood before him, expectant, tired, confused. Richard moved clumsily to the bedside table, where two glasses were placed. He poured a little red wine into each and, looking over his shoulder to be sure that Anne was distracted, which she was in the untying of a ribbon in her braid, he opened his signet ring to let loose a fine white powder which, he was promised, would degrade his Queen into her death easily and leave little trace behind of foul play. It would seem to be only a short illness.

He took the glasses, asked Anne to sit on the bed and then sat there himself, passed her the glass within which her death lay, and proposed a toast, “To my Queen.” Anne had the briefest thought that Richard was ready to murder her, but why would he do that? And she drank. Richard watched her drink and he himself allowed a gulp of wine to pass his lips, knowing his glass to be safe.

The first was a numbness, a creeping tingle that began on her tongue and spread tickling to her lips, the corners of her mouth twitching idly as one fighting a smile. And, for a moment, she did smile; smiling at her husband who sat before her, strangely still, strangely intense, and she smiled for he was frightening her. Her tongue pressed at the back of her teeth as her lips sealed but there was no feeling. The corners of her mouth twitched again and stilled and she moved to speak when a crackling - starting in her chest and rising like bile in her throat - stopped her voice and sent her into a sudden urge. Gently, she brought her fingers to her lips, traced the curve of her bottom lip where the numbness had now left her devoid of the touch, and then cocked her head to one side. Something like an inquisitive child, without the words to express the question, but desperate for enlightenment from an elder; a husband; her God; her Richard who, passive, watched her with an uneasy fascination. His eye sparked and her finger twitched against her face as the pain twisted her: this was the second. Her glass scattered to the floor, smashed. Doubled over, clutching at her throat, she gasped and still Richard watched, without a single movement but still with that awful intrigue, as one inspects an experiment or a wild animal in a cage. He had never seen a poisoning before - that was one facet of death that had alluded him all these years. And, what a marvellous thing to behold. It captivated him - much like Anne had captivated him first, made him shiver with that sharp beauty of hers. A little flush of danger, the promise of something thrilling: Anne, poison, one and the same.

Oh, the bastard! She felt hot with rage and pain. He looked at her with all innocence and all evil. She hated him. Her husband; her king; and she hated him will every contorting muscle. Clever boy. She was clever, too.

Her two hands closed fists on the front of his jacket, tightly, and pulled so that his body cascaded brokenly into her kiss: hard, metallic and violent. His groan thundered on the end of her lips as his hand pushed her away, desperate, until her weakening body relented to his force and she fell away from him, back on to the bed. Her vision, blurred and dark, returned to see her husband staggering towards the window, crying out, his hand feverishly tearing at the mouth she had poisoned. If he could die now, she thought. If she had done enough.

Richard’s mouth was burning where her tongue had searched and her lips had tasted. He spat at the ground, and there were slivers of blood in the spittle. Hers, he thought, it must be her blood, and he turned to see Anne, lying back and heaving, blood collecting at the side of her mouth, and he assured himself that the blood was not his and that he had nothing to fear save a stinging sensation and the shame of his own weakness. He called her a bitch - a child’s insult and one that reeked of pettiness and one that he would later regret but the metallic taste in the back of his throat made him hiss the curse to his dying wife. The word passed unhindered into her unhearing ears, and only the snarl on his lips gave evidence of his insults. She grinned, if that were possible, content in the reaction she provoked. If she no longer had the strength to kill Richard, she would at least make him remember her. She wanted to prove something – she did not know what.

Richard turned over his shoulder to her. She was arching backwards on the bed, grey as the sheets bunching beneath her, red bubbles at the smiling corners of her lips. No, they were not smiling, but they looked to be smiling, and this could almost have amused the deadly King. She had smiled in almost the same way when he had wooed her first: a smile composed of agony and felicity. He would always think of those two things in harmony when he thought of Anne: agony and felicity.

She was being ripped apart from the inside out. This was not beautiful as he had hoped. A white rose turned red, stained and scattered.

Anne drew herself up, a brief moment when the pain subsided and only the sickness remained. That terrible nausea that thundered in her head, almost to the point of her brain exploding. Richard could only watch as she pulled herself to the edge of the room and began to cackle. Richard stared at her with wide-eyed disbelief as she laughed - at him! She held her body up on the cabinet, forcing herself to stand before him, though her head was swimming and any noise that he made was thick and gelatinous. He had chosen his poison well – damn him.

“What is it? What?” he said, his hand still trembling at his mouth – only a little painful, not enough to kill him.

“Oh, you put children on me, Richard.”

Richard faltered, gasped out, “What? What do you mean?”

“I carried five… maybe six – ah!” She doubled over, gritted teeth, and then laughed again, a hollow resounding noise that felt more akin to the growling of animals than to his Queen. “I lost count!”

Richard grew impatient and angry, pulling his cracked spine as straight as he could muster (which hurt him) and snarling, “You are delirious. Your womb was empty and stale!”

“No!” she cried. She looked at him with the fury of the devil and, God forbid, it almost frightened the King. “I carried them! Pennyroyal… that did the trick.”

“What?”

“Painful though… but you never paid much attention to that, did you?”

“You... you nasty whore!” Richard spat. “You demon!” How could she have been so violent, so cruel, such a pretty face as hers? To take his sons from him! She had brought this upon herself! She could have stayed with him - ruled with him - worn the crown by his side as he had always hoped they would! But she had betrayed him. As she groaned through another spasm of pain, he saw the false vixen that he had tricked himself into affection for. He thought of strong Kings that may have been, dark-haired, Richards all. Anne was no woman. Murder! He felt fit to cry it from the windows! Murder! Murder! Anne had murdered them! His own princes! Murder!

This is how Elizabeth must have felt. He almost felt a twinge of - what? - pity? Princes in a tower, unknown to him, murdered, butchered. If he had known what it felt like, perhaps - no. Weakness. He rid himself of it. Elizabeth of York was his way forward. She would give him as many sons as he wished. And they would be beautiful, strong boys. All Anne could have given him would be sick younglings, little like she was. And, yet, Anne was strong. She fought this poison which now sought her very life, oh, she was fighting it. Their children. It hurt him to consider it: what would they have been like? Many had said he was incapable of love; just as many had said he was incapable of being a King, incapable of fucking a woman, incapable of murder. They had been wrong in all that. He thought, in all earnestness, that he may have been capable of loving a son of his.

Or a wife, even.

But what does that matter? Too late now. Anne screeched.

They had been born into violence and violence had been their first language, they had learned violence from each other like greedy children, their love had been violence and so it had to be that their ending was violence, too.

Anne was satisfied that she had wounded him – if not physically, then at least with this confession. She staggered to the bed again, muttering, “I couldn’t bring your spawn into the world… I would rather die.”

“You’ve got your wish,” Richard replied, scouring the floor beneath his feet. He could barely look at Anne now. He could not bring himself to watch her but, if he had, he would have seen her smile, look at him, heave and heave, and take her final breath. Only half-triumphant. "We could have had everything, Anne!" he cried. She had not life left to hear him.

He eventually looked up once she had been silent for a minute or so. The Kingmaker’s daughter; his Anne; his Queen. Now dead and still on the sheets, her vacant stare fixed on the ceiling and her hand grasping at her bloodied throat. She had almost looked the same way on their wedding night. Oh, she was as wicked as he was, he thought. What a woman. He had almost loved her.

“I shall see you in hell, love.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading - do let me know your thoughts below!


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